1 The Doctor and the Fury
by lilurchin
Summary: The Doctor meets a violent young woman with a mysterious past. Can he and Meg settle their differences before a lethal contagion spreads on Earth? (pilot story of a series. eventually romantic)
1. Chapter 1: introductions

_I don't own Doctor Who - duh.  
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_please review!_

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**The Doctor**

Legend tells of a mighty warrior that wanders the cosmos who could topple regimes with a single word (or rather six), stopping armies in their tracks at the sound of his voice (and a show of confidence) and slaying monsters with little more than his wits. He is ancient, and his loneliness clings like a cloud around him no one besides the very last of their kinds can understand. It is said he has no name, that who he is is hidden in darkness and shame, so his enemies and his friends bestow titles…

The Last of the Time Lords…

Lonely Angel…

Defender of Earth…

The Oncoming Storm….

… and …he couldn't get out of England.

He didn't notice at first. After all most of his travels brought him to Earth, even when he was shooting for a destination halfway across the universe. His beloved Time And Relative Dimensions in Space is much much older than he is – and he's nine hundred years old, so he doesn't comment on a destination quirk now and again. But after five tries, finally landing him in London, 4:28 am June 3rd, 2018, AD he got out of the TARDIS to let her cool down and to walk off his frustration.

The night was cool and the streets quiet. He spied a billboard for La Boheme playing that night. Maybe he'd visit a museum – he liked museums, liked to see how many of his adventures ended up there, what they got right and what they got wrong. He didn't expect a great adventure – not all his trips ended up a race for life, and this definitely had the feel of a ho-hum, do-nothing Sunday.

**Megara Savvides**

The curtain couldn't entirely block the glow from the parking lot lights. There wasn't quite enough fabric to the job properly – a common design flaw in many hotels. That and their poor taste in art. Mercifully it was too dim to fully make out the insipid blobs of color she'd been staring at for the past half hour. The clock by her head read 4:27 in the morning. The math was easy: three hours sleep – an hour less than she usually had, but she wouldn't get anymore tonight, she knew. A natural ability to get by on less sleep coupled with her nightmares freed up most of her nights. Finally, boredom got her to her feet. She'd go for a walk until she found a café open. She suppressed a wince at the sharp pinch in her side. The pills on her nightstand both tempted and repulsed her. She left them unopened. After a quick shower, she was out the door by 4:44 unaware of how dramatically her life would change within the hour.


	2. Chapter 2: a slow Sunday

She breathed as deeply as the dared, still favoring her side. The cold air helped the lingering ache. This was one of her favorite times of day, the stillness, the peace, the cusp of a bright new day with new possibilities.

Relaxed and enjoying the walk, it took her longer than usual to notice someone walking behind her. Casually she turned her head and saw a well-built man, his oversized coat adding inches he didn't need in size. She continued, alert but far from alarmed.

Up ahead she saw another man, lighter than the first, but at five foot three, it was easy to outweigh and outreach her. He turned and saw them approach. He pushed away from the wall and came her way purposefully. Hairs on her neck stood up as she considered her options. There was still a chance this was harmless, but she wasn't going to bet against her instincts. She was outnumbered, and she had no idea if they were carrying weapons.

There was a narrow alleyway between her and the man in front of her. There might be an escape down it, but that'd be a bonus. What she really wanted was for them to line up to attack her – she didn't want to be surrounded. She turned down the alley. The shadows of the two men reach past her. She tried the side door. Locked. The far end of the alley ended in a brick wall, too high to climb. No escape.

She faced the two men, her blood rushing through her veins. "Two against little old me? How is that fair?"

"We ain't gonna hurt you… much." the skinny one said.

"I won't make the same promise," Meg warned. "Come on, boys."

"First things first." The man raised a gun and fired. She held out her hands futilely. A dart bit into the skin on her palm. She pulled it out, and it disappeared in her hands. "What the..?"

The two men rushed her. This would have to be a short fight before whatever drugs were in the dart knocked her out. That meant a messy fight and broken bones. She had to be vicious.

The larger man took point, swinging his fists. She dodged and slammed her elbow into his solar plexus. While he was gasping for air, she grabbed his hair and brought it down, while driving her knee up into his nose. The second man, meanwhile, made it around his partner's side and started swinging. She grabbed his wrist and twisted against the joint. Immobilized in this lock, she gave a precise chop to his neck (and his vagus nerve) leaving him dizzy and flirting with unconsciousness.

"Look out!" A new man joined them in the alley. The distraction nearly worked, she almost didn't dodge a jab to her throat from the recovering larger attacker. But dodge, she did, and caught the offending arm and used it to throw him over her shoulder and onto the pavement, the wind knocked out of him. She twisted around to face the newcomer and gasped in pain.

She held tightly to her side and focused hard on not passing out or throwing up. Now was not the time for either. The newcomer ran up to her, and she threw her hands up to block a blow that never came.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

She stared. He was a handsome man with sideburns and crazy hair in a pinstripe suit. It took her a moment to realize he wasn't with the ruffians she just beat up. A stranger ran down an alley to break up a fight for her? She smiled, her faith in humanity going up a notch. "Yeah. Just fine. Do you have a cellphone? These guys will need some medical attention."

_BANG! BANG!_

Meg flinched and turned. Up on the fire escape, was the gunman. He put a bullet each between the eyes of her attackers. She was sickened. Sure, she hurt them, it was possible she put lasting damage in at least one body part each, but they didn't deserve to die.

"Why did you do that?" the newcomer yelled, enraged. Meg rethought the possibility he was friends with the dead guys.

"Loooose endsss." The man in the suit pulled at his face, and the mask slid off. Three beady eyes stared down at them, and a circular mouth grinned with shark-like teeth.

Meg snarled. "Alien."

"What's a Verloc doing here? No, more to the point, why would a Verloc ever share a hunt with a couple of human thugs?"

The Verloc hissed.

"Come on, talk to me. This is a class 4 planet, and these humans aren't worth your skills. You dishonor yourself."

"'Aren't worthy'? Come down here and fight me, coward. I'm not afraid of you."

The Verloc hissed again and dropped the gun. This was a creature that liked death up close, with the warm blood of his prey on his tongue. He began to climb down the brick wall, the claws on his hands scraping into the mortar enough to support him. A thin line of drool fell from his open maw.

"Um, you should be… run." The man advised, taking her hand and pulling her away. Meg was inclined to resist but remembered her injury. She wasn't usually one spoiling for a fight. She shook her head, berating herself. She let her anger cloud her judgment, that was rule one, and a rookie mistake.


	3. Chapter 3: the chase

"I'm the Doctor."

"Dr…?" she drew out, prompting for a last name.

"Exactly. You?"

"Meg." She replied. Two could play that game.

After about a half mile of running, they paused to catch their breath. Meg bent over panting, her hand pressed tight against the pain in her side. The Doctor listened for sounds of pursuit. She was impressed. She was in shape, but the Doctor looked barely winded.

"That man, he's a Verloc. They're hunters. We haven't lost him for long. They hunt by scent. You need to circle around to the next block. There's a big wooden blue box, shed size, says 'police call box' on the sides, can't miss it. Here are the keys. Go inside. You'll be safe there."

She shook her head. "Won't work."

"No, it's sturdier than it looks. The assembled hoards of Ghen-"

"-I mean, he'll follow me, not you. You go to your box and call for help. I'll draw him away. We're near the Thames; I'll jump in the river; hopefully, he'll lose the trail there." _And hopefully avoid a life-threatening infection from whatever's in the water…_ she thought, but that was a concern for later if she made it through tonight alive.

"What makes you so sure?"

"He's a hunter, you said. He'll follow the scent of blood over any other, right?"

"Yeah, so?"

"So, back there, in the fight, I tore open my stitches." Meg peeled her hand from her side. Deep red looked black in the darkness and stained her white shirt. "The run hasn't helped anything."

The Doctor pulled a cylinder from his coat pocket and aimed it at her wound. A high pitched eeeeeeee, and a little blue light turned on. It made her side feel funny, and then the pain began to ebb.

"What is that?"

"It's a sonic… instrument. The sound waves are strong enough to vibrate your nerves, which interrupt the pain signals to the brain. Should hold you a short while, I can't do anything about the blood loss. Can you still run?"

"As far as I have to." She answered.

Meg was running on autopilot with the Doctor pulling her along by the time they reached a warehouse. When he opened the door, she didn't look twice.

"Ha ha!" the Doctor crowed with a jump and a slamming of doors.

She leaned against a stack of crates, lightheaded and rubbery legged. Burning pain forgotten in the chase came back with a vengeance for being ignored for so long. The fight tore her stitches; she wasn't sure what the run did, but any more damage and she'd be in the same shape as the night she got them.

"You said they hunt by scent…" Meg reminded him, fighting to even her breathing. They wouldn't be alone for long. They needed to get to the docks and into the water, or the alien would hunt her down no matter where they hid.

"Do you trust me?

There was something she couldn't put a finger on, but she felt she could trust him with her life. "More than the creature outside, less than myself." She answered bluntly. It might have seemed lukewarm, but he was still a stranger. She mistrusted her trust in this man.

"Take off your shirt."

She raised an eyebrow. "Really, in a warehouse, on our first date? What sort of girl do you think I am?" the adrenaline and blood loss made her punchy. She smiled, gratified that when she obeyed, he turned his face away. Another point in the good guy column for the stranger.

"It's for your scent. I'll set up a false trail around the warehouse; you hide under the stairs there."

"I know what it's for." She said, annoyed her quip was lost on him. Did he really think she was flirting with him while running for their lives, with a gaping abdominal wound? The boy was cute, but she'd have to be a nymphomaniac to be seriously thinking about _that_ right now. But a little lie down sounded heavenly, so she couldn't stay mad.

Moments after she settled herself, the warehouse doors rattled open. The alien was closer on their heels than they thought.

"Simple trickssss." The Verloc hissed. "I will find you, human. Come out, and your death will be quicker."

She slowed her breathing as much as she could, her lungs protesting. She thought of those sharp teeth and empty eyes and trembled. Meg couldn't run much more. The Thames was close, but not close enough – the beast wasn't even winded. She would have to trust the mysterious Doctor.

_An alien hunting an alien. _Her mind screamed at her that she was making a mistake. Was her trust real, a strange connection two beings occasionally formed? Or was it a manipulation for a far worse fate?

The Verloc was close – she could see his legs through a gap in the boxes she hid behind. _Where was the Doctor?_

"She's gone." The Doctor announced from the catwalk. "Besides, she was wounded. That's hardly a challenge. Now, me on the other hand. Prime condition. Rare breed. Wouldn't I make a better trophy?"

"Yessss." The Verloc answered.

"Right. Catch me if you can." The catwalk rattled loudly as the Doctor began to run.

The Verloc didn't give chase. Meg bit her knuckle. A moment later a box lifted and hurled through the air – hitting the Doctor in the back and knocking him off the catwalk to the ground. He didn't get up. From the way his convulsed, Meg guessed the wind got knocked out of him. The Verloc made a chuffing, slithering sound that raised the hairs on Meg's neck. It was laughing! Slowly, the Verloc approached his prey.

"The light!" The Doctor got his breath and yelled.

_What?_

"Sunlight burns them."

He was getting to his feet, but too slowly. The Verloc was almost on him. Meg looked and saw a looped chain that ran to the warehouse shutters and pulled. With a piercing scream that would live forever in her nightmares, the Verloc's palid grey skin turned red before the dawn's pink light and blistered. He tried, pathetically, to crawl out of the rectangle of light, before it lay still. Her stomach turned as the smell like burning worms reached her.

"We did it!" The Doctor crowed. "Meg-"

She heard his voice from far away. She didn't feel the need to respond, and it was doubtful she could summon the energy anyway.

"Meg?" the Doctor said again.

The voice was louder this time, and it was starting to annoy. Why couldn't he let her sleep? She took a deep breath. The cool concrete felt so good, she didn't want to leave it.

"Meg, are you okay over there? I'm coming." Footsteps were getting closer. She had to be up by the time they reached her - an ingrained instinct to hide her weakness.

"MEG!"

"I'm fine. I'm coming. Quit shouting." She found the strength she needed in that instinct and annoyance. But as she stood, she found her blood soaked into her jeans down to her knees. Pressing down on her wound she saw blackness muddle her vision as what felt like a bolt of lightning shoot from her side up to her collarbone and down her leg.

"Meg…" from his look of sympathy, she was looking worse for the wear.

There was being macho, and then there was being stupid. "If you could take me to the hospital…"

He took her free arm and wrapped it around his shoulders.

She didn't see the building he took her to. She used all her concentration on staying conscious – a losing battle – her vision coming and going. She remembered making her way to a white duct-taped chair. He left her. She heard him rummaging.

"I have just the thing – I'll sting like crazy, but I don't have nano-genes onboard, I travel and if they ever escaped it'd…"

She knew nothing until a sharp pain brought her back from oblivion. She batted him away, annoyed she had little coordination and less strength. "Ow. Quit it. A little rubbing alcohol, a needle and thread and I'll be out of your hair."

"Do you ever stop fighting? Lie still." He ordered.

She tried to obey and hoped his title of 'doctor' wasn't a Ph.D. Her legs hung down from the love-seat length armless chair and watched warily as he shone a reddish orange laser on her torn and seeping gash. She curled against the sensation it caused.

"Sorry, sorry." He winced. "Almost done. How'd you get these?"

"You want me to talk now?" she gasped out, with a white-knuckled grip on the iron railing behind the seat.

"Done!" he announced, tossing the healing laser over his shoulder with a self-satisfied smirk.

Meg prodded the area in disbelief. The wound was completely healed. Only blood marked where it had been. There wasn't even a scar.

"Amazing." Meg jumped off the chair. A little woozy, she noticed, but hardly anything to worry about. "So, what is this place?"

"It's my spaceship. It's called the TARDIS: time and relative dimensions in space."

"You're an alien." It wasn't a question.

"I am."

"What kind?"

"The good kind." He said. "I'm a Time Lord from Gallifrey."

"…Okay."

"Okay?"

"Yeah." She shrugged. "You saved my life. I think that qualifies as 'good.'"

The Doctor smiled. There was hope yet.


	4. Chapter 4: careful what you wish for

_Don't go just yet._ The Doctor wanted to say. How many times had he said so in his very long life? Enough times he could predict her future with few blank spots. She would be perfect for him and him for her, filling their days with the heady drugs of adventure and danger. And then it would end. Abruptly. If she lived long enough he would have to end it, leaving her enough time to settle down to a normal life and start a family, find a new purpose in life. At least that's what he'd tell himself that was the reason, and it was to some extent, but mostly it was not wanting to see her decay, to love a mayfly was one thing, to watch it die another.

Heartache for him, a brilliant life for her.

That didn't happen often.

The Doctor watched her inspect the TARDIS for the first time and wondered about her far more likely end: a violent death.

Maybe the spaceship she was on would blow up. Maybe his DNA would rip her mind apart. Maybe she would step in front of a bullet for him. All these things happened to other companions. When they happened to her, she wouldn't blame him. None of them did, not outright at least, but it would be his fault, always, for being too weak, for saying 'don't go yet. Come with me."

He cleared his throat. "Can I drop you off somewhere? Where's home?

"At the moment it's the Hotel Leon a few blocks from where you found me. I travel too much to justify a house."

"Really?"

"Yeah, my parents were travel junkies, never spent long enough in one place to develop any particular loyalty to it."

She was too perfect for him. Some companions went with him to ease the boredom of their mundane lives, but they grew tired of their new life as quickly as their old one and had to stop just as he was unable to. Here was a woman with the same Traveler's blood.

_Stay focused,_ he told himself, _home is where the heart is. Family._ "Where are they now?"

"From what I'm told they're in A Better Place."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"Yeah."

"So, Hotel Leon, it is." He spun a dial and with a grinding groan and a thump, they arrived. "Don't do any heavy lifting for 24 hours, drink plenty of fluids, oh, and quit visiting dark allies in the middle of the night. Seriously, what were you thinking?"

"'How lovely your face looks encircled in the soft moonlight.'"

"Eh?"

"From La Boheme, have you seen it?" She said, pointing to the advert across the street, preferring to keep herself to herself.

"I was there at the premiere." He said.

"Right. Goodnight Doctor." She stepped out and turned around. "Huh. It's smaller on the outside."

"No. It's bigger on the inside."

She waited for an explanation that didn't come. She shrugged, accepting the refusal since she did the same. "Whatever floats your boat, big guy…"

'Come with me.' The urge to say it was stronger now, insistent now that her departure from his life forever was imminent. She would never know how lucky she was he kept silent. He would not destroy this glowing life.

"I never said thank you."

"It was nothing."

"I guess this is goodbye."

"See you around." He watched her cross the street. "Have a fantastic life, Meg." He closed the door and locked it. Turning around to set the coordinates for his next trip he saw her shirt on the console. He hadn't given it back since he took it from her in the warehouse. It was half caked in blood, probably ruined, but he took it up and went to the door to give it back anyway. He didn't want the reminder.

He expected to rush to the hotel before she disappeared into a hotel room. He didn't even know her last name. But it turned out, finding her was not the problem. She was still where he last saw her, face down on the concrete.

He ran to her and turned her over. "Run." She was coming out of the faint, murmuring, "Monsters."

"It's okay, Meg. The monster is gone now." _Wait_. He thought. _Monsters? As in plural?_

The Doctor wondered if he heard right, or if subconsciously she grouped him in the same category as the Verloc. He remembered her beautiful face twist in an ugly way when she saw the Verloc wasn't human.

Meg's eyes opened.

"Hello." He said brightly.

"Hmmm." She moaned and tried to stand.

"Easy."

"I'm fine. Blood loss equals lightheadedness. I'll eat something and – ow!"

The Doctor tried to help her to stand when she yanked her hand back with a hiss. He took her hand, gently this time, and tilted it to the light. The flesh around a small pinprick on her palm was an angry red and puffy to the point of bursting.

"When did you get this?" he asked. He hadn't noticed it before.

"In the fight, I think. One of them shot this dart at me, and it sorta disappeared."

"You didn't think I might need to know something like that?"

"I forgot about it till now." Meg defended. "I kinda had other things on my mind."

"Come back inside. I'm going to see what's causing this infection; it's too quick to be normal."

"Do you think it's flesh-eating bacteria?" she asked with far less fear than he felt a person in her position should feel.

"Maybe." He admitted. "But I have just the thing for that."

He waited for the results with impatience. The swelling was going down quickly. If she hadn't passed out from the blood loss right when she did, he wouldn't have noticed it. That it looked no more dangerous now than a bee sting didn't ease his mind one bit.

With a ping, the computer announced it had a result.

Meg looked over his shoulder at the screen, but it was nothing but geometric shapes, mostly hexagons, and concentric circles. "What does it mean?"

"Lambda." He said, gripping the sides of the screen till his knuckles were white. Why Lambda? There were several diseases terrorists used, but Lambda was not one of them. It was too contagious, too deadly. Terrorists made statements of power, but it was self-defeating to kill everyone – possibly themselves along with their victims.

"So what's Lambda?" Meg asked.

He turned around and put his hands on her shoulders. Lambda was used for the extermination of entire worlds, or if the world had space travel, entire quadrants.

"Okay, it's bad. How bad is it?" Meg asked.

"I will find a cure, Meg. I won't let you die." He jumped to the console and started flipping switches and setting coordinates.

"Verlocs don't settle down – and I didn't mean what I said back there about him being abandoned, I was just revving him up. He was in his prime which means there have to be others out there and some form of transportation. So-" the TARDIS lurched with a thump. "Have you ever been in space before?"

"Where are we?" Meg asked, frozen. She knew instinctively they were no longer on Earth even without the Doctor's question. There was a tingling along her skin like a static discharge, subtle and easily ignored, but all the same, it rubbed her the wrong way.

"The Verloc's ship right above where we were and about…" he double checked the computer screen. "Twenty-eight and a half minutes in your future."

"Twenty-eight?" she wondered about the significance of twenty-eight and a half minutes.

He shrugged. "It happens sometimes — half an hour's nothing. I, er, accidentally went twelve months in Rose's – a friend of mine – future instead of twelve hours. Difficult day, her mum called the coppers on me."

"And there are more of those things that attacked me outside that door?"

"Nope. Abandoned hallway, completely deserted… tell you what I'll poke my head out first." He offered, forgetting the number of times he'd walked into a circle of soldiers with weapons aimed at his head. He poked his head out the doors then cheerily announced they were alone. But the Doctor and Meg were not as alone as they thought…


	5. Chapter 5: temptation

**The man**

"The Doctor and Meg have left the TARDIS." The man reported watching the pair from the security footage. He was in a room mere feet from them.

"Focus. I don't want the TARDIS tampered with until I am ready."

The man frowned, unused to being bossed about. He was her lapdog only so long as he got ten uninterrupted minutes alone with the TARDIS mainframe, and here it stood, temporarily abandoned.

"What's stopping me?" he asked half in defiance, half in lazy curiosity.

"Besides your debt to me?" she asked. "No, you're right. Something like obligation is lost on the likes of you. Do as I say. Get the Doctor's attention, deliver my message and you will have your reward in due time not before."

"I got you a vial of her blood. I'll deliver the message in a few minutes. Why the delay? You wouldn't double cross me, would you?"

"Interfere with my plans, and you'll wish you were back where I found you."

The man hung up. Knowing the Doctor would head for the nearest medical bay first, he set down the opposite way down the hallway towards the stasis hanger with one last glare at the big blue box.


	6. Chapter 6: invitation

"It has to be in one of these medical bays." He said, pointing to the map in the hallway.

"Why?"

"Where else would you put a cure?"

"No, I mean, why do you think the cure is here? What if they're not terrorists and they're just infected? Where is everyone? The ship's empty."

He pursed his lips. She had a point. He smiled broadly. He would be hopeful for both of them. "Eternal optimism, that's why. Come on, let's find the cure, and then our hosts."

The Verloc spaceship was a generation ship – this wasn't a vessel for short trips, they lived and died onboard. As such, it was enormous. _Slow and steady._ Meg told herself as breathing became harder and more painful. _Deep breath, and hold,_ _one, two, three, four- out two three four._

"Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." Her hands formed white-knuckled fists by her side. _And out, two, three, four._

"You know, I didn't believe you the first time you said that, but relatively speaking you were."

"In your medical opinion, _Doctor, _do you think that excessive complaining ever got anyone anywhere?" she snapped.

"No, but hiding your symptoms from me could make things worse."

"How so?" Meg said through her teeth.

"What?"

"We don't have the anti-lambda, so what exactly can you do with knowing what I feel like?"

"Nothing."

"Well then..." She pushed herself forward, smothering a painful cough. "Let's keep moving."

Without a word he took her arm and put it over his shoulders, helping her stay upright. She accepted the help in silence. Finally, they came to the end of a hallway that read "Medical Bay #9."

"Hang on, why is that in English?"

"It's not."

"I think I know English when I see it."

"You'd think so. It's the TARDIS. She's telepathic. She gets in your head and translates all known languages. It's automatic. Sorry if you're uncomfortable with the idea. It's not as if she came with an off switch – or if she did, she's long since gotten rid of it."

If she wasn't dying, she imagined she would be very uncomfortable, but having a next-gen translator app in her head was the least of her worries right now. "You make it sound like the TARDIS is alive."

"She is."

Meg wiped at her eyes and trembled when her fingers came away bloody. "Doctor…"

"I swear to you Megara Savvides: I will find the cure." The doctor gripped her head in his hands, earnest, but frightened for his new friend. He didn't mean to do it. Slipping into her mind was strangely natural.

There was a plain white room. It was dark there, hot and oppressive. A small child in pigtails was curled up in the corner. Fear, like strangler vines, crept over everything.

_It feels like my insides are dissolving_. The child whimpered.

_That's because they are._ The Doctor answered. It was difficult to lie when sharing a consciousness.

The child looked up with a gasp. _You're in my head!_

"GET OUT!" The child was Meg all grown up now and furious.

_I'm sorry._

She threw him out of her mind and slammed shut the door.

"I shouldn't have… it was an accident." _Accident?_ The Doctor was at a loss. _ I never do that. Who is she? _What _is she?_

"Don't touch me, alien." She growled, pulling away from his grip.

"I'm so sorry." He said again.

"Impressive." A disembodied voice came from a hidden loudspeaker. They both looked up at it. "Megara, I'm sorry to say you don't look so well, but I am glad to see you all the same." There was a long pause before he greeted the Doctor as well. "Still alive and trespassing I see, Doctor. I can save Meg. I have the anti-Lambda. Bring her to the center of the ship. I'll be waiting."

Nothing the Doctor said brought another word from the mysterious helper. There was nothing left to do but obey. He turned to Meg. He could apologize again… he sighed and held out a handkerchief as a peace offering. She took it and wiped her eyes.

"Who was that?"

"No idea. Don't you? He knows you too."

He shrugged. "Figured you're a smaller pool to draw from. How many aliens do you know?"

"Helpful aliens?" she shook her head.

_How many bad aliens have you met_? The Doctor wanted to ask. She obviously knew more than just the Verloc: she was taking their existence way too casually not to have previous encounters. Keeping her reaction to his (accidental) psychic intrusion in mind, he didn't ask.

"…Sorry for snapping." Meg said.

"Don't do that. I'm still going to help you." The Doctor said. "You were well within your rights to do far worse than kicking me out from where I wasn't invited."

She accepted his arm as they left for the center of the ship and hopefully the cure. They kept walking, with still no sign of any other living soul onboard. It was starting to get a ghost ship vibe.

Even with the cart, the Doctor could see Meg's condition deteriorating as the minutes ticked by.

"Not far now," he said.

"Hmmm."

"We'll get you to the center of the ship, and I'll find this person with the cure." He promised again.

"I appreciate your effort." She said woodenly.

"Are you resigning yourself?" he asked, shocked. Was this really the same woman to fight off two thugs, and a Verloc with abdominal injuries? What happened to the spit-fire temperament, death before surrender? "You shouldn't give up."

She chuckled - a wet sound with a cough at the end. "And you shouldn't make promises you can't keep. There are worse ways to die. With the pace this disease is making, you have an hour or two tops to save me. It'll be quick. I like that. And I'm assuming from your behavior so far I won't be alone. I'm just sorry we couldn't meet under better circumstances. I'll always be that crazy chick you met and died on you the same day. Please believe me, that I'm not always this damsel in distress."

"Oh, I believe you," he said, pulling into the large open storage warehouse that was the center of the ship — rows upon rows of coffin-like structure filled the space. No one was there waiting for them.

"Hello?" she called. The sound echoed and died out with no response. "The cure is somewhere in here?" Meg asked, feeling exhausted just looking at the task before them.

The Doctor got out and studied the readout on one of the nearest pods.

"What is all this?" she asked from the cart.

"The crew."

"Why?"

He typed into the pad on the side of the stasis chamber. "He's dying of Lambda. And if he has Lambda, it's a sure bet everyone else in here has it too."

"What about you?" she asked, a little ashamed she hadn't asked before.

"Oh, I'm fine."

"Really?"

"Well if I'm not, I will be just as soon as we find that cure." If they didn't, the two of them wouldn't be the only casualties – Earth would follow quickly after. He opened an empty pod and returned to help her out of the cart.

"What's the plan?"

"I'm going to look for our host. If you feel much worse than you already do I want you to get inside. If whoever invited us is just jerking us around, it'll give me more time to find your cure." He handed her his sonic screwdriver. "It's already set. Just point and think 'on.'"

She laid her head on the cool surface of the stasis chamber. She didn't relish getting inside. It looked like a coffin and smelled like the Verloc that tried to kill her. Not like the Doctor. He smelled nice, even if he was an alien.

Her thoughts swam and wandered. Her fever made it difficult for her to keep her focus. She shivered. She was so cold. The last thing she wanted was to be cryogenically frozen. Her eyes closed. She wasn't sure how long a time passed, but she felt someone place a coat around her shoulders.

She was too ill to be alarmed. She turned her head and smiled. "So it was you… I knew you'd come for me."

The man touched her cheek. "Always, my dear."

Meg didn't bother asking for the cure. Everything would be alright with him here, so there was no need to prompt him. "How are you in space?" She murmured. She closed her eyes once more and let herself drift into oblivion safe in his arms.


	7. Chapter 7: revelations

The Doctor returned to Meg and found she wasn't alone. A man was kneeling on the floor, cradling her unconscious (he hoped) body in his arms, his back to him. It had to be the man who summoned them here, the one with the anti-Lambda.

"Who are you?"

"You don't remember me? After all we've been through?" He turned around and smiled. "I'm hurt."

Looking into his baby blue eyes, he knew in his gut who the man was, even when the last time he saw him he had brown eyes – coupled with a completely different face. A time lord recognizing another of his kind had nothing to do with appearances.

"Master."

He was alive. That was so _him._ Long before the war when time lords had only twelve lives to live, the Master used his up and found out a way to steal regenerations from others. Later, he refused to regenerate to spite the Doctor. Little knowing the backup plan, the Doctor cremated him. The Master came back anyway but in a highly unstable form. A genius like the Master might have come up with yet another loophole, but he was sucked into the time lock to stay forever, never dead, always dying.

"How?" the last time they saw each other, they were working together – admittedly only because the bad guys held an unwavering bias against the criminally insane – still, as the last Time Lords the Doctor was prepared to accept him as a brother. Only what was he doing now?

The Master brushed a lock of hair away from Meg's face with the barrel of his gun. "You know I saved her life once, too? She was just a little slip of a thing then. How time flies."

The Master set Meg's body down on the ground, drew the sonic screwdriver from her limp fingers and stood up. He backed away far enough to allow the Doctor to go to her. He checked her pulse. Still alive. He breathed a sigh of relief. "What do you want?"

"You don't really care, Doctor. Admit it. You've never cared about what I wanted. Everywhere I went, there you were to spoil my plans. But I care. And I know what you want. You want the anti-Lambda onboard, don't you?"

"You have it?"

The Master fished it from his jacket pocket.

"Give it to me." the Doctor said. "I can still save her."

The Master dropped the vial.

"No!" the Doctor shouted, but it was too late. The serum lay splattered on the tile floor among shards of glass. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why save her if you were only going to let her die? Why risk yourself? The Lambda can just as easily mutate and kill you with her."

"And there's where your line of questions should have taken a sharp left turn." The Master said. "You actually thought she had Lambda, didn't you? Well don't worry about me – though it is touching – I'm perfectly safe."

"What did you do?"

"Parasitic nanogenes hidden inside dead Lambda cells. It'd fool any computer, but Lambda? Please, Doctor. I'm crazy, not stupid."

"Nanogenes." He repeated dully, realizing all that worry was for nothing. Well, not quite nothing. The Master took out a small remote.

"Fantastic little things with a smorgasbord of features. There are the standard Lambda symptoms you've seen – I loved the hemorrhaging of the eyes, didn't you? Very dramatic. There's coma, heart attack, stroke, seizure, death and… yes, here it is: agony."

He pressed the button and Meg's eyes snapped open only to squeeze shut as the pain hit every nerve cell in her body. She screamed.

"Stop it." the Doctor commanded, trying to hold her still.

He did nothing.

"Please!"

The Master knelt in front of the Doctor, his eyes cold. "She's mine, old friend. She has been mine for going on fifteen years now. I will decide when to stop, not you, and I decide to stop only when it pleases me."

The Master held up the remote control and silently dared the Doctor to say something, Meg screaming all the while, blind and deaf to everything but her pain. When he didn't speak, the Master pressed the coma button again, and she went limp.

"Why torture her? What do you get out of it?"

"It's fun." He replied. "To hold another person's life in my hands. You know that's the only toy in the universe I'll never tire of. But it'd be a shame to kill her – so don't make me. She's fascinating. Don't you think she's fascinating?"

"I get it." the Doctor said, holding her. "You want me to suffer. But I just met her, and empathetic pain will only go so far. Inject me with the nanogenes. Leave her out of this."

The Master aimed his gun at the Doctor's head with a smile. "I would be happy to oblige." He squeezed the trigger. It clicked. Empty. He didn't need the gun, the remote control was enough of a threat, and it couldn't miss. "However, little Miss Meg is involved whether we like it or not."

"Why?" he asked baffled. "_Why_? She's just a human. What could you possibly want with her?"

Meg started screaming again. The Master shut it off just as abruptly with another click of a button. "Don't be coy." He warned.

"I wasn't. I don't…"

The Master blinked. "Really? You've known her for how many hours now, and you haven't noticed it yet? I'm disappointed in you. _Look _at her."

The Doctor swept her hair from her face and studied her peaceful face. He was distracted before, and he never took the time to really see her. "I don't know what you want me to say." There was a beauty mark on her right cheek and a little white scar above her eyebrow. He noticed earlier her eyes were a lovely honey color that complimented her olive skin and chestnut hair. The nanogenes did a number on her, but she was still beautiful. She'd be stunning once she was happy and healthy again. He felt his stomach flip flop, but he buried the feeling. _Human._ He reminded himself.

"Close your eyes if you must, but focus."

The Doctor would rather turn his back on a Zygon than close his eyes with the Master in the room, but he had little choice. He obeyed, closing his eyes and expanding his senses, searching for anything out of the ordinary.

Nothing happened at first, his attention still on the Master and his insane plans.

Only…

Less in his mind, and more in the pit of his stomach, he felt something. Butterflies. Time seemed to slow. For the first time since he saw the Master, his heart beats calmed to a normal rhythm. A human would describe the feeling as true love, but the Doctor knew it was something far, far rarer.

The Doctor looked up, feeling the hair on his arms stand up.

The Master grinned. "Interesting isn't it? And the phenomenon is stable. She's had it since she was eight, at least."

"Impossible."

"And yet."

"What is it?"

"You know what it is."

"But how? She's human."

"Maybe."

"No. She is. I checked when she boarded the TARDIS."

"Then explain it." the Master challenged.

"I can't, not yet." The Doctor admitted.

The Master shrugged. "It doesn't matter. The Matron is alive and would like to see you – and Meg – at your earliest possible convenience. Don't keep her waiting."

"Wait!" the Doctor protested. "She survived too? How many others are there?"

"Ask her yourself."

"Did she tell you to torture Meg?"

The Master shrugged. "She never told me not to."

"And what makes her think I'll overlook this?"

The Master looked pityingly on the Doctor. "She'll be in touch. Don't keep her waiting – I can always get another remote."

He tossed his controller to the Doctor and disappeared.

There were two large buttons on the bottom one black and one white. Start and Stop. The options must have been in a psychic relay with the Master. One would turn off the nanogenes, and Meg would wake up perfectly healthy. The other one would most likely kill her. The Doctor touched the white and paused. Too obvious. He pressed the black and Meg's eyes opened.

"Hey. Welcome back."

"You found the cure." She smiled and looked around. "Was there someone else here?"

"No. Why do you say that?" he lied.

She shook her head. "Just a dream I guess – it couldn't be true, but I could have sworn my uncle Ian was here."

He sighed. So it really was a dream.

"Your uncle?" he asked, helping her to her feet, slipping the remote into his bottomless pockets.

"Yeah, he's not my biological uncle, just a good friend of the family. He dropped out of nowhere and saved my life when I was a kid; I guess that's why I dreamt of him."

"When was that?" he asked, stomach dropping.

"Going on fifteen years. Why?"

"Just curious." He lied. "What was his name again?"

"Ian Masterson."

The Doctor took her back into the TARDIS, wondering what she was and what he was going to do with her. She knew the Master – and didn't hate him. Suspicious. She hated aliens – and he was an alien. Another red flag there. She was violent – he was a pacifist. Problematic. She was human – with an inhuman ability. Intriguing.

The Matron and the Master had plans for her. That settled the internal debate. Meg would stay where he could see her, with him on the TARDIS. He couldn't say she was safe there, but he'd do his best to protect her until he found out more.


	8. Chapter 8: you just might get it

The doctor double-checked the computer. Sure enough, the Verlocs all had nanogenes, not Lambda. The Master fooled them too. Why? That was just what the Master did on slow weekends when he was bored. The Doctor decided not to wake them up just yet – but he'd leave a note.

"What about all these… people?"

The Doctor noticed the slight hesitation before Meg called the Verlocs 'people', but didn't comment. "I'll set the flight computer to fly to the Shadow Proclamation before waking everyone up, let the Judoon deal with them."

"Shadow Proclamation? Judoon?"

"The Shadow Proclamation keep Earth and other oblivious planets in a couple of galaxies protected. They don't seem to do a fantastic job of it, but there's only so many mercenaries – Judoon – to go around. Thankfully.

"Earth is an inhabited world with sentient life forms. The Verloc we met was supposedly infected – just being there was releasing a super-virus on the population to kill all but the .0001% of the population with natural immunity. That's against the law of the Shadow Proclamation." Shooting Meg was probably payment for the 'cure.' Or perhaps Meg was infected long before, and the dart was something else entirely. There was no way of knowing with the Master.

"Will we have to testify?"

Brought back to the conversation, he shook his head. "Won't be necessary. They can read the guilt in their prisoners."

"And if they feel no guilt? They're killers."

The Doctor frowned, seeing her prejudice against aliens. He'd witnessed the same in many humans. He didn't have much patience for it as it was rude, narrow sighted, and usually resulted in catastrophically bad decisions. She probably wanted them all to rot in stasis forever.

"They'll sort it. Trust me," he said with little hope she would.

Slowly, she nodded. "Okay."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I mean, I won't say 'no harm no foul,' and desperation doesn't excuse the attempt, but you stopped them in time."

The doctor came to a decision then. "So. Where to next?"

"Anywhere?"

"Anywhere. Any time."

It was such a simple question, but the Time Lord smiling before her offered the universe, the possibilities staggered her. Suddenly Meg felt like a child again when the world was a lot bigger, and Papa had just asked the same question, laying a worn and heavy atlas in her small lap. The same giddiness muddled her thoughts as it did then. Where to? So many choices. The Game of Fate, and it was her turn to choose; she would close her eyes, open the atlas at random and lower her finger…

_Don't think. Just choose._ "Your planet."

Like flicking a switch, the light in his eyes went out, as if the magic keeping his corpse alive suddenly faded away, and Meg was standing before a zombie. She recognized that look from her mirror, and like him, she learned to hide it, because that look sucked all the good feelings from a room, alienated the normal people. The Doctor lost everything he loved.

He was just like her.

Cutting him off before he could tell her some half believable excuse for why they couldn't visit, Meg said, "Actually, maybe next time. Better idea. I've always wanted to go K2."

"Done." The Doctor took the reprieve and pulled a lever hurtling them into Vortex.

Too late to amend her choice again. She chose it because she was thinking of her parents. It was always on her Bucket List to summit the mountain, to make it so the game was played as it should be. But she always found some excuse not to go. It was really one of the last places on Earth she wanted to visit. Maybe that was why they ended up where they did…


End file.
